Quote:I like the WHO.Me too. Especially Pinball Wizard.
Seriously, though. I'm perfectly happy to use that data set. Looks great! And it says exactly what I've been saying all along.
1) The US spends more than anyone else, by far.
2) The US already has a "socialized" system that costs as much as "socialized" medicine elsewhere.
3) The US pays an overwhelming amount for health care that does not cover everyone, and does not provide particularily good social health outcomes.
Quote:I'm not sure that moving from private to public will reduce the over inflated cost of our government supplied health care.Probably not total costs, no. Per person covered, probably. Unless you're willing to accept a lowering of standards of care as well, costs of the government sector, considered alone, are unlikely to go down. What will go down is total costs. The private sector costs are massively bloated, and reflect a system which fails on so many different levels to provide cost-efficient care. Add a public option, and costs should fall. Replace it entirely with a single-payer system, and costs should fall a lot.
Quote:So, put another way, as a worker I pay about the same as you do for my own health insurance, and then I pay another amount for someone else. This was the brilliant pyramid scheme devised back in the FDR days, where you pay in SSI and FICA, then when you get old you suck it back out. One problem... Everyone is sucking out more than double what they paid in.Okay. So reduce benefits. I'm very concerned about the concept that every first world country will have a hard time paying for current levels of service in the future. By paying so vastly more than other countries, the US is making its own problem overwhelmingly worse. In those apocalyptic CBO graphs showing the US drowning in debt by 2050, the big player is health care.
Quote:Another interesting fast fact... (data dump of fast food info)Americans eat more fast food. I get it. I agree. But they don't eat *that* much more. As I said to Eppie, I'm sure your generally worse health situation means that your costs are going to be higher than other countries'. But is $100 extra a year on fast food really costing $2000 on heath care? I really doubt it. The effect is not that huge.
Quote:By my calculations, even when omitting cancer, about 48% of these deaths are due to chronic health issues related to obesity, smoking and alcoholism. The things that Health Care can't fix, but that Healthier Lifestyle choices can fix.The whole thing is a red herring. If a national health and exercise education program is what you want, I wouldn't be opposed to it. Good luck with it, really. But it has nothing to do with the mad, bureaucratic tangle that is your current health care system. There is no reason why, if you could reduce costs with education, that you couldn't *dramatically* reduce costs with education plus a single-payer system.
Don't get your hopes up, though. Culture is sticky, and people are stubborn. Funnily enough, some people are even suspicious of the government, and don't just do what they're told by politicians with big ideas. ;)
-Jester